Man, I have been here for more than seven years, have studied and graduated from university as well. He is definitely someone to look up to as far as learning how to speak Chinese goes. His accent is 99% flawless and his vocabulary and delivery is ridiculously accurate. Kudos Da Shan. Kudos.
I LOVE DASHAN! Haha, I love watching his lessons on CCTV 9. I already know everything he teaches, but I just love watching him. It gives me something to strive for in my Chinese. Haha
Wow respect :) His accent sounds very natural. I think the easiest and most sincere gesture that one can make to touch the hearts of another people is to learn and speak their language. I'm from Singapore and I know how to speak english, mandarin and malay. But the only language that can move me to tears when spoken is still mandarin.. there's no way to explain this despite the fact that I've been speaking english all my life (even more than I speak mandarin chinese)
I HAVE TO KNOW! what is your studying technique, how did you become so skilled in this language. I also study mandarin, but yours is without accent, excellent!
@Gnickk yes, good question. this is because i'm a singaporean. in singapore, 74% of the population is chinese, but we're all brought up in mainly english speaking families. as a result, most of the children here find it more difficult to grasp the concepts of mandarin. this is especially so if none of the child's family members speak chinese at home. therefore, when chinese is taught in school, most children find it tedious and difficult to learn.
it's true! i knew him when he appeared on the stage of Chinese new year variety show which had an audience of billions in 1988. i think that's the first time foreigners had appeared on that stage. he was an international student at beijing university and he spoke Chinese with an accent at that time.he made an impression on the audience.
@AngleBladeXP it is, it rank first among the dialects. almost all its speakers are Han, the 55 minority has its own languages. or in the case of Miao or Yao have it's own dialects as well. On the other hand, Mongols, Tu and any other Xianbei decedents speak practically speak the same language.
then a very famous cross-talk actor taught him.i think that's also the first time a foreigner had learned cross-talk. he often appeared on different kind of stages. his Chinese became better and better. he became very famous and popular. finally i found that his Chinese became better than me. his pronunciation is very standard , though it has a hint of a beijing accent. he can express his ideas with very proper words. he also can speak out some chinese idiom that i don't know.
Awesome! He beats us all. He's a performer naturally. His Chinese is that of the Chinese story teller or Chinese performing artist. Perfect standard Mandarin with different characterization. No wonder the kids are happy and love him.
this guy is AMAZING! I'm a Chinese from Singapore and I speak English, Mandarin and Japanese fairly fluently but my Mandarin could NEVER be as good as his!!! OMG!
@240kankan there are over thousands of different characters with many different strokes, and each character has multiple meanings. it might be simple to us chinese, but if you look at from a foreginers' point of view, it IS a difficult language to master.
just been in china, met this french guy who lived in china for 13 year and his was nothing like that. It was only just understandable. this dude is awesome
@xingfenzhen Cantonese is quite hard to learn. Most people who knows Cantonese learns it since they were really small. It's really rare to find a person who learns cantonese as their second language and speak it fluently
@JiessieZ18 From Wikipedia... Dashan (Chinese: 大山; pinyin: Dàshān; literally "Big Mountain") is the Chinese stage name adopted by American Mark Henry Rowswell, (born May 23, 1965 in New York, New York [1]) who works as a freelance performer in People's Republic of China.
@AngleBladeXP actually if you are in the SF bay area, there is actually an mixer social club for mandarin speaker. there quite a few white guys and girls in there. many of them, I think speak just as good if not better than Da shan (though, he is a head of the time in the 1980s) also amazing one of the girls can writing and write quite well. though She did start in middle school years and spent 4 years studying in China.
He's very impressive and if he can do it, so can I! I really want to learn how to speak Mandarin and Cantonese! There's still hope for me then! Thanks for posting.
That man's Chinese was amazing!!! OMG! I never saw a foreigner who speaks like that advanced level!! He probably learned form elemantary school?? But, he had a nothern Chinese accent which means he learned Chinese in Nothern China. I appreciate it!
@sinophilia its the other way aswell.A chinese person, will once hes in an english country, need many years to master it.Its like like english or chinise is hard, but the jump from one to the other is hard.Because they are so different, totally different families of language.
@gaozhi2007 lol. Good you corrected some people here. Lots of Canadians who have achieved so much are always referred to as Americans . I don't know why there's always a mix up.... intentional mix up.
@boxofclox Yeah, i'm pretty sure this guy's Canadian. But same premise. I remember seeing his TV show when I was living in China. He really is the most famous non-Chinese face in China.
@KhmerD0g nah, you type out the pinyin (how the word is pronounced) and the computer gives you a list of the words that are pronunced that way, for example, if i type “ming”, i get this list. 名明铭命鸣冥茗溟暝螟朙眳掵酩洺姳覭詺慏 （there are more..) they now have programs where if you type in the pinyin in sequence, the computer will work out which words will fit the combo so you dont have to type 1 at a type, ex: eye saw a bare -> i saw a bear kinda thing, as for the keyboard, they use QWERTY, same as us.
@siegemos The title is not insulting if you mean better than average Chinese. It is precisely because China is regaining its status as a GREAT country that more and more foreigners will learn Chinese and become scolars of China. I am Japanese. Longtime ago many many Japanese were fluent in written Chinese at least. The drop in Chinese fluency corresponded to the drop in China's political influence. Now China is back: more and more people will know Chinese extremely well.
@superwhiz88 I'm an american who will be going to college to learn Spanish and Chinese. idk if it's that most American's don't speak more languages cuz we are too proud, i think it's more because we don't have the varieties of languages surrounding us like European countries do. Granted that means that most people are ignorant of the advantages that speaking more than one language can have, but either way, i don't think it's pride as much as it is ignorance.
I agree competly, I am Chinese and I find it disturbing that there are people trying to play the blame game with the double standard of bilingualism rather than appreciate this man's clear appreciation and respect of the language. There are plenty of important things to argue and debate about, this is definitly not one of them. The man can speak very well and deserves all the recognition that he has.
I don't know where you are from but if that was the case you would be hearing more about it. Yes, there are a few which do but for the most part they are in the minority. I am speaking of Americans not necessarily Canadians or elsewhere which may be different. Chinese is one of the hardest languages on the planet to learn other then maybe Arabic. Until schools start taking language study more seriously which currently they don't. I don't see this changing anytime soon, just saying.
holy holy holy crap....i never realized how flawless his mandarin was....native beijing accent too...i'm from beijing myself and his accent totally just kicked my ass. LOL.
he is 100 percent canadian. he study chinese in vencouver university and then came to Beijing china. studying chinese in Beijing University. He even speaks better than I. we so admire him.
Not to mention thousands of other places around the world. Mandarin is the standard DIALECT and Cantonese, Wu, Fujianese, et al will be around for a long long time.
@crystalgl0w yeah, like in the case of 的，得 and 地。 You only use 得 after an action, like 她开心的笑得合不拢嘴。Anyways, chinese do have grammar. You can go google it if you want;)
Ok guy I will give you more information about DaShan(大山), he host a program on CCTV-9, which is an international channel in Chinese Centeral Television. In that program he teachese the forgieners chinese. If you have Dish Network, you might be able to watch that program.
the simple language is refering to the text, the writing. the chinese mainland goverment regulated the text (writing) and simplifyed it. so to be more correct, its not the simple language, its simplified. while in cantonese, the text is traditional.
Knowing some Spanish, Hebrew, and a tiny amount of Chinese, I think that English would be easiest to learn. Maybe I am biased towards my first language but there is only one way to use passed tense, no preterite tense, no imperfect tense. Chinese doesn't use a tense at all from what I understand. The step towards human evolution starts with universal language and universal measurements (I vote metric). Could get a lot more done if we all on the same page.
he is famous 4 bein able 2 speak so well...i 4got his name tho..shows how much i kno..ops....n3way i swr he was born there or sumthin? n now he teaches others how 2 speak mandarin..he got a whole family n everythin
wow i actually seen this guy on chinese informercials when i was in china .. i forgot what he was selling .. probably a language learner electronic pda device thingy or i dunnno
@240kankan actually, we DO have a chinese grammar system. i hope you can get your facts right before you comment. also, it is near impossible to be able to learn all the characters there are, and that concludes my point that chinese is difficult.
You are wrong. Dashan is from Canada, he came to China in the 80s and actually appeared on China central television to do some comedy sketch with another French girl(I believe) who was also in China to study Chinese while his Chinese was only, understandable. Approximate six (or five, or seven, I don't really remember) years later, he reappeared on CCTV with perfect Mandarin Chinese with no trace of accent at all.
Anyone can learn any language really, the only Country I've seen struggle is Japan because they have no accents in their own language so being introduced to a foreign language they usually adopt their own way of speaking it.
It is harder to learn Chinese than it is to learn English. I should know! I grew up able to read Chinese and after I learned English, I forgot now to write and read Chinese, which was my biggest regret.
he speaks perfectly and even better than I. most of chinese have an accent. atually we have so many accent even we use the same characters, that we can't know each other when someone speak their local chinese accent.
@armorcore666 I saw his first show on TV in 1988. I liked his show very much. Then I often pay attention to the news about him. And you can also google him online. Mayby most of news about him are in Chinese. If you need, I can translate more information about him for you.
I've taken both Cantonese and Mandarin...and I find both very difficult. However Japanese is very easy to converse...Japanese is indeed easier for a Westerner to learn.
Man, I have been here for more than seven years, have studied and graduated from university as well. He is definitely someone to look up to as far as learning how to speak Chinese goes. His accent is 99% flawless and his vocabulary and delivery is ridiculously accurate. Kudos Da Shan. Kudos.
he's famous in china. Has his own show and everything. Mad props to him.
if you close your eye and hear him speak, you would think that he is chinese.
WOW u speak without an accent. very appreciated.
I LOVE DASHAN! Haha, I love watching his lessons on CCTV 9. I already know everything he teaches, but I just love watching him. It gives me something to strive for in my Chinese. Haha
This is incredible! I've also heard Chinese people speak in perfect English without an accent!
Wow respect :) His accent sounds very natural. I think the easiest and most sincere gesture that one can make to touch the hearts of another people is to learn and speak their language. I'm from Singapore and I know how to speak english, mandarin and malay. But the only language that can move me to tears when spoken is still mandarin.. there's no way to explain this despite the fact that I've been speaking english all my life (even more than I speak mandarin chinese)
I HAVE TO KNOW! what is your studying technique, how did you become so skilled in this language. I also study mandarin, but yours is without accent, excellent!
Amen to that! I'm majoring in Chinese in college and the tones are the hardest thing about learning it.
@Gnickk yes, good question. this is because i'm a singaporean. in singapore, 74% of the population is chinese, but we're all brought up in mainly english speaking families. as a result, most of the children here find it more difficult to grasp the concepts of mandarin. this is especially so if none of the child's family members speak chinese at home. therefore, when chinese is taught in school, most children find it tedious and difficult to learn.
it's true! i knew him when he appeared on the stage of Chinese new year variety show which had an audience of billions in 1988. i think that's the first time foreigners had appeared on that stage. he was an international student at beijing university and he spoke Chinese with an accent at that time.he made an impression on the audience.
@AngleBladeXP
it is, it rank first among the dialects. almost all its speakers are Han, the 55 minority has its own languages. or in the case of Miao or Yao have it's own dialects as well. On the other hand, Mongols, Tu and any other Xianbei decedents speak practically speak the same language.
then a very famous cross-talk actor taught him.i think that's also the first time a foreigner had learned cross-talk. he often appeared on different kind of stages. his Chinese became better and better. he became very famous and popular. finally i found that his Chinese became better than me. his pronunciation is very standard , though it has a hint of a beijing accent. he can express his ideas with very proper words. he also can speak out some chinese idiom that i don't know.
lol? he was the guy for the FORD ad!!! crazy, non chinese guy can speak so well!
Awesome! He beats us all. He's a performer naturally. His Chinese is that of the Chinese story teller or Chinese performing artist. Perfect standard Mandarin with different characterization. No wonder the kids are happy and love him.
上海人講吳語，廣東人講唐話。日本人講日語，韓國人講韓話。此為天公地道也。至於一個區區幾百年歷史的滿清夷話，洋人喜歡講就畀佢講到夠。
this guy is AMAZING! I'm a Chinese from Singapore and I speak English, Mandarin and Japanese fairly fluently but my Mandarin could NEVER be as good as his!!! OMG!
@240kankan there are over thousands of different characters with many different strokes, and each character has multiple meanings. it might be simple to us chinese, but if you look at from a foreginers' point of view, it IS a difficult language to master.
just been in china, met this french guy who lived in china for 13 year and his was nothing like that. It was only just understandable. this dude is awesome
my goodness, he's speaking really accurate and the accents are all in right tone! 2 thumbs up!
@boxofclox - Actually he's Canadian.
He'll be in Toronto this June doing shows
@xingfenzhen Cantonese is quite hard to learn. Most people who knows Cantonese learns it since they were really small. It's really rare to find a person who learns cantonese as their second language and speak it fluently
@JiessieZ18 From Wikipedia...
Dashan (Chinese: 大山; pinyin: Dàshān; literally "Big Mountain") is the Chinese stage name adopted by American Mark Henry Rowswell, (born May 23, 1965 in New York, New York [1]) who works as a freelance performer in People's Republic of China.
When did this guy start studying Chinese and how long did it take to get this good? Makes me want to keep going : P
@AngleBladeXP
actually if you are in the SF bay area, there is actually an mixer social club for mandarin speaker. there quite a few white guys and girls in there. many of them, I think speak just as good if not better than Da shan (though, he is a head of the time in the 1980s) also amazing one of the girls can writing and write quite well. though She did start in middle school years and spent 4 years studying in China.
I just saw this guy on CBC interview, he supported China a lot. I like him.
@gaozhi2007 his english name is mark rowswell, and he is a canadian, who majored in chinese in university of toronto
He's very impressive and if he can do it, so can I! I really want to learn how to speak Mandarin and Cantonese! There's still hope for me then! Thanks for posting.
That man's Chinese was amazing!!! OMG! I never saw a foreigner who speaks like that advanced level!! He probably learned form elemantary school?? But, he had a nothern Chinese accent which means he learned Chinese in Nothern China. I appreciate it!
@sinophilia
its the other way aswell.A chinese person, will once
hes in an english country, need many years to
master it.Its like like english or chinise is hard, but the
jump from one to the other is hard.Because
they are so different, totally different families
of language.
i really appreciate this man, and wish i could speak like him.
@gaozhi2007 lol. Good you corrected some people here. Lots of Canadians who have achieved so much are always referred to as Americans . I don't know why there's always a mix up.... intentional mix up.
@boxofclox Yeah, i'm pretty sure this guy's Canadian. But same premise. I remember seeing his TV show when I was living in China. He really is the most famous non-Chinese face in China.
Canadian Mark Rowswell, better know as Dashan in China. Where he has worked as performer, television host and cultural ambassador for over 20 years.
I have major respect for Di Shan, he's cool, I always watch him presenting Learning Chinese on CCTV
gawd, he didn't make this video so just applaud him for working so hard and taking time out of his days to learn another country's language. really.
@KhmerD0g nah, you type out the pinyin (how the word is pronounced) and the computer gives you a list of the words that are pronunced that way, for example, if i type “ming”, i get this list.
名明铭命鸣冥茗溟暝螟朙眳掵酩洺姳覭詺慏 （there are more..)
they now have programs where if you type in the pinyin in sequence, the computer will work out which words will fit the combo so you dont have to type 1 at a type, ex: eye saw a bare -> i saw a bear
kinda thing, as for the keyboard, they use QWERTY, same as us.
@siegemos The title is not insulting if you mean better than average Chinese.
It is precisely because China is regaining its status as a GREAT country that more and more foreigners will learn Chinese and become scolars of China. I am Japanese. Longtime ago many many Japanese were fluent in written Chinese at least. The drop in Chinese fluency corresponded to the drop in China's political influence. Now China is back: more and more people will know Chinese extremely well.
@superwhiz88 I'm an american who will be going to college to learn Spanish and Chinese. idk if it's that most American's don't speak more languages cuz we are too proud, i think it's more because we don't have the varieties of languages surrounding us like European countries do. Granted that means that most people are ignorant of the advantages that speaking more than one language can have, but either way, i don't think it's pride as much as it is ignorance.
Love this guy, one of my favourite xiang sheng entertainers since 10 years ago.
I agree competly, I am Chinese and I find it disturbing that there are people trying to play the blame game with the double standard of bilingualism rather than appreciate this man's clear appreciation and respect of the language. There are plenty of important things to argue and debate about, this is definitly not one of them. The man can speak very well and deserves all the recognition that he has.
@ahhh196 ohh ic.. but still they don't have tenses, like past tense, present tense, etc
I don't know where you are from but if that was the case you would be hearing more about it. Yes, there are a few which do but for the most part they are in the minority. I am speaking of Americans not necessarily Canadians or elsewhere which may be different. Chinese is one of the hardest languages on the planet to learn other then maybe Arabic. Until schools start taking language study more seriously which currently they don't. I don't see this changing anytime soon, just saying.
His Chinese is so good! He's such an insperation for me, who studies Chinese. When I lived in China I lived close to that bookstore! Haha. :D
Oh i know this guy! Aint he canadian? I remember he was the host/tutor for this "how to speak english" program on 2AC radio....
He is amazingly good. No accents whatsoever.
it's da shan!
he appears in chinese commercials.
not a surprise...
lots of people know who he is.
this guy has his own t.v. program in china i watched it when i was there its a speaking chinese for foriegners program
holy holy holy crap....i never realized how flawless his mandarin was....native beijing accent too...i'm from beijing myself and his accent totally just kicked my ass. LOL.
it's 4-5 separate languages and about 20 or 30 dialects each.
Mandrian
Cantonese
Wu/Shanghainese
Ming Na
etc
Wow! He speak well in Chinese! Hope he can keep tis great job!
@crystalgl0w we add some things like i have done... before as past tense, but we do have future tense.
he is 100 percent canadian. he study chinese in vencouver university and then came to Beijing china. studying chinese in Beijing University. He even speaks better than I. we so admire him.
Not to mention thousands of other places around the world. Mandarin is the standard DIALECT and Cantonese, Wu, Fujianese, et al will be around for a long long time.
@crystalgl0w yeah, like in the case of 的，得 and 地。 You only use 得 after an action, like 她开心的笑得合不拢嘴。Anyways, chinese do have grammar. You can go google it if you want;)
Ok guy I will give you more information about DaShan(大山), he host a program on CCTV-9, which is an international channel in Chinese Centeral Television. In that program he teachese the forgieners chinese. If you have Dish Network, you might be able to watch that program.
@ahhh196 It is one of the most hardest for English speakers to learn
I used to watch a show with this guy in it. It was supposed to be teaching Chinese, but I didn't really learn too much from it.
He is "大山", (big mountain), very famous actor and host in China now. Everybody in China likes him.
This guys is simply amazing. He doesn't even have a bit of accent.
the simple language is refering to the text, the writing. the chinese mainland goverment regulated the text (writing) and simplifyed it. so to be more correct, its not the simple language, its simplified. while in cantonese, the text is traditional.
@5p34x *gasp* Are you from Iceland? Is Icelandic really difficult? Wow.
Knowing some Spanish, Hebrew, and a tiny amount of Chinese, I think that English would be easiest to learn. Maybe I am biased towards my first language but there is only one way to use passed tense, no preterite tense, no imperfect tense. Chinese doesn't use a tense at all from what I understand. The step towards human evolution starts with universal language and universal measurements (I vote metric). Could get a lot more done if we all on the same page.
@emoondacase
So you are from Hong Kong when you speak Cantonese?
I am from Slovakia, that's middle Europe :oP
@AngleBladeXP
I speak Xiang native. u?
@crystalgl0w That's true, but they still have grammar structure:)
@FRANKORILLA Not that started learning after being a teenager. That is the point.
he has been hosting in CCTV for a long long time and he is a Canadian. He lived in China for so long and that's why.
I wanna give up whenever I hear his Chinese. He's the king.
I'm a Canadian learning Chinese and I can tell you that this speaks amazing mandarin, just like a native. Very difficult to do.
actually even as of 2006 he is still the standard that most foreigners are rated against
he is famous 4 bein able 2 speak so well...i 4got his name tho..shows how much i kno..ops....n3way i swr he was born there or sumthin? n now he teaches others how 2 speak mandarin..he got a whole family n everythin
@ramlocaj how can u know that?
wow i actually seen this guy on chinese informercials when i was in china .. i forgot what he was selling .. probably a language learner electronic pda device thingy or i dunnno
@SourExplosion
Chinese is harder to speak, in terms of the tone and pitch. But as far as grammar, English is much harder.
@240kankan actually, we DO have a chinese grammar system. i hope you can get your facts right before you comment. also, it is near impossible to be able to learn all the characters there are, and that concludes my point that chinese is difficult.
You are wrong. Dashan is from Canada, he came to China in the 80s and actually appeared on China central television to do some comedy sketch with another French girl(I believe) who was also in China to study Chinese while his Chinese was only, understandable. Approximate six (or five, or seven, I don't really remember) years later, he reappeared on CCTV with perfect Mandarin Chinese with no trace of accent at all.
@boxofclox You'll have to wait a bit longer. Da shan is Canadian :P
he's so famous all over China a canadian,he showed up in 2008 Olympics with canadian team in the opening
Anyone can learn any language really, the only Country I've seen struggle is Japan because they have no accents in their own language so being introduced to a foreign language they usually adopt their own way of speaking it.
that guy looks familiar
he's the one that host a show for teaching Chinese on cctv9 international
Is this Serge Melnyk? (sp)
@Shokeybutsi ya he's a comedian. it's like a two-person-talking-jokes show in chinese... and he'll be one of them.
He does Chinese comedy sketches dude for Beijing University...He is super awesome!
His pronunciation and accent are excellent
haha, he's wonderful!ill send my kids to this school soon.
He maybe the best chinese speaking foreigner 10 yrs ago,but i don't think he is now. But he is making millions though since he is probably the first.
it's Da Shan, a canadian national who's been in China for like 20 years, very famous over there, does adverts and everything.
@bigbeing My Eng skills go unable to match his Chin skills, true, I don't deny on that. Thanks for ur points.
Is he the guy that hosts a programme in CCTV9?
It is harder to learn Chinese than it is to learn English. I should know! I grew up able to read Chinese and after I learned English, I forgot now to write and read Chinese, which was my biggest regret.
he speaks perfectly and even better than I. most of chinese have an accent. atually we have so many accent even we use the same characters, that we can't know each other when someone speak their local chinese accent.
That is Da Shan, he is everywhere in China.
I met him at the airport when I was 6 years old, I think he was going to toronto or something
Da shan is awesome :-)
I thought it was Da Shan. It had to be him, he's like totally a master at the Chinese language.
@armorcore666 I saw his first show on TV in 1988. I liked his show very much. Then I often pay attention to the news about him. And you can also google him online. Mayby most of news about him are in Chinese. If you need, I can translate more information about him for you.
@emoondacase
:o) you're chinese? that guy speak nice chinese, I wish to speak the same
I've taken both Cantonese and Mandarin...and I find both very difficult. However Japanese is very easy to converse...Japanese is indeed easier for a Westerner to learn.
Keep drooling, keep foaming. "I don't have any more exam" haha. Good for you pengyou.